Traffic crowding in urban areas; Control with urban tolls and flexible working hours

The paper analyses the effect of a toll and flexible working hours on the morning traffic congestion caused by car commuters in an urban area. According to the economic approach the mechanism of congestion results from the attitudes of individual commuters making an arbitrage between schedule and travel costs. The congestion is the collective externality generated by this individual behaviour. The approach proposed in the paper consists in modelling the commuters' preferences for a particular departure time. Four incentives are explicitly taken into account. The two schedule incentives are based on the departure time from home and the arrival time in the office. The two travel incentives are based on the congestion time and the peak-hour toll. It is shown that the confrontation between the incentives leads to equilibrium distributions of both schedule and travel times. The benefits of peak-hour toll and working time flexibility for reducing the morning congestion are investigated.